Home Energy Audit

Greening Neighborhoods is a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing household use of nonrenewable energy and water.

The City of Dunwoody is pleased to announce a competition where every participant wins: the household energy & water challenge. We’ve worked with local non-profit Greening Neighborhoods to bring you a quick and easy way to evaluate the energy and water you use and give suggestions on how to reduce your usage. Energy and water savings translates into dollars and resources saved. Directions are below. A few big winners will get an additional upgrade kit with some premium supplies. Pick up your free retrofit kit to get started today

The Home Energy Audit is a simple way households can take stock of how much energy and water we consume. Over 21% of all energy used in Georgia is consumed in our homes and 32% is used from transportation. As households we have the capacity to reduce by 1/3 the amount of energy we use and by 1/2 the amount of water we use. Doing so will help our communities become greener and healthier, while reducing our utility bills and improving our level of comfort. It's a win-win course of action.

To get started follow these steps:

Measure and fill in the Home Energy Audit. The Audit shows goals to meet for each of its four categories: water consumption, electric consumption, heating and cooling, and transportation. Goals are based on best practices and/or national averages.

Enter your email address. By doing so your data will be shown on a spread sheet. The data will be archived by Greening Neighborhoods only for the purpose of this contest.

After you have submitted your results see if you met or beat the goals indicated for each category. If you fall short there are links you can click showing ways to improve consumption.

Make the indicated improvements to your home or to your patterns of behavior.

Measure and fill in the Home Energy Audit when you have finished step 4.

Once again enter your email address and submit your data. Your improvement will be the basis of the contest, where everyone is a winner.

HOME ENERGY TRACKER - WATER USAGE

How to find your gallons per minute

You'll need a mesuring cup and a way to keep time (Your phone probably has an app for that - You could just count in your head)

Now turn on your water and start the timer! Once you've filled for 10 seconds pull the measuring cup away and multiply the amount in your cup by 6 (10 seconds × 6 = 60 seconds or 1 minute)

Remember: You could fill for 2 seconds and multiply by 30 (2 × 30 = 60)

Conversion Chart

US Gallon

US Cup

Liter

1

16

3.78

Faucets

How many gallons of water is used in one minute (gpm).

With a measuring cup, fill it for 10 second, pull the cup away, see how full it is and multiply by 6 to get the amount of water used in 60 seconds. You can do this for 2 seconds and multiply by 30. Then divide the number of cups by 16 to get gallons.

All Faucets and Showers

With a measuring cup, see how much water you use until the water is hot.

No. of gallons

Goal: 30 seconds = 0.25 gallons (1 quart)

If it take longer than 30 seconds see the instant off device, which saves water and delivers hot water faster.

Toilets

How much water does it take to flush your toilet in gallons/flush (gpf).

Most toilets have the gpf printed on the tank. If not, flush your toilet and turn off the water valve. Now fill the tank by hand and measure how much water it takes to fill the tank to its "full" mark. This amount of water will be your gpf.